International Courant
Laws geared toward easing Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban by creating restricted exceptions for pregnancies attributable to rape or incest was launched Monday within the GOP-dominated Home, as lawmakers wrangle with a difficulty on the forefront of final 12 months’s marketing campaign for governor.
Republican state Rep. Ken Fleming filed the measure on the final day that new Home payments may very well be launched on this 12 months’s 60-day session. The invoice’s prospects are unsure, with Home Speaker David Osborne saying the chamber’s GOP supermajority has not mentioned any specific abortion invoice.
Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban has been in place for the reason that U.S. Supreme Court docket overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The state’s so-called set off regulation took impact, banning abortions besides when carried out to avoid wasting the mom’s life or to forestall a disabling damage. It doesn’t embody exceptions for circumstances of rape or incest.
KENTUCKY HOUSE VOTES TO CHANGE CHILD LABOR LAWS, FOOD STAMP RECIPIENT REQUIREMENTS
Fleming’s proposal would change that by making abortions authorized in circumstances of rape and incest if accomplished no later than six weeks after the primary day of the girl’s final menstrual interval, in keeping with a press release describing the invoice. The measure additionally would permit an abortion to take away a useless fetus and in circumstances of a deadly fetal anomaly, that means the fetus would not survive after delivery.
“All of us encounter troublesome heart-wrenching choices in life,” Fleming stated within the assertion. “As a father of two daughters, I’ve all the time supported them financially, emotionally, and particularly spiritually. With them on my thoughts and in my coronary heart, exceptions for life-saving measures for the mom and in circumstances involving rape or incest ought to be included in our state’s abortion regulation.”
Present exceptions to avoid wasting the mom’s life or stop disabling accidents would stay below his invoice.
The Kentucky State Capitol is seen in Frankfort, Ky., on Jan. 14, 2020. A invoice geared toward easing Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban by creating restricted exceptions for pregnancies attributable to rape or incest was launched on Feb. 26, 2024, the final day that new Home payments may very well be launched this 12 months. (AP Picture/Timothy D. Easley, File)
The measure additionally features a provision making a course of for physicians to doc the circumstances surrounding an abortion carried out below state regulation.
The last-minute invoice submitting mirrors one other GOP lawmaker’s try final 12 months to loosen up the state’s abortion ban. That measure, additionally filed on the final day for invoice introductions within the Home, made no headway because the abortion subject was ignored in 2023 by the legislature’s Republican supermajorities.
The difficulty rose to the forefront of Kentucky’s hotly contested governor’s race final 12 months. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, an abortion-rights supporter who gained reelection to a second time period, hammered away at his Republican challenger’s help of the state’s sweeping abortion ban.
Kentucky’s Supreme Court docket refused to strike down the ban final 12 months. The justices, nonetheless, dominated on slender authorized points however left unanswered the bigger constitutional questions on whether or not entry to abortion ought to be authorized within the Bluegrass State.
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In late 2023, a Kentucky girl sued to demand the precise to an abortion, however her attorneys later withdrew the lawsuit after she discovered her embryo now not had cardiac exercise. In 2022, Kentucky voters rejected a poll measure geared toward denying any constitutional protections for abortion.
Kentucky is one in all 14 states with a ban on abortions in any respect phases of being pregnant at the moment in impact.
Because the U.S. Supreme Court docket overturned Roe v. Wade and the nationwide proper to abortion, bans of some variety have kicked in in most Republican-controlled states. Two — Georgia and South Carolina — ban abortion as soon as cardiac exercise could be detected, round six weeks into being pregnant and earlier than girls typically notice they’re pregnant. Utah and Wyoming have bans on abortion all through being pregnant, however enforcement has been paused by courts whereas they weigh whether or not the legal guidelines adjust to the state constitutions.
